Hearstory: The Hilarious But True History of Hearing Devices

Hearstory: The Hilarious But True History of Hearing Devices

Eargo has been called the hearing aid of the future (thank you TechCrunch, 2015). And while it sure would be nice to have a time machine to see everything our R&D team comes up with (who has the bandwidth to build a time machine!?) we thought it might instead be fun to take a look back at the storied, and at times hilarious, history of hearing aids.

To be clear, hearing loss is no laughing matter. People have suffered from it from the dawn of mankind. And therein lies the rub: throughout the centuries, people haven’t had access to the technology that stands to really help them with their hearing loss. So what did people do before the advent of modern electronics – before batteries, microphones, or even plastic became widely used? It wasn’t always elegant or even practical for that matter.

With that in mind, here’s a timeline of some highlights of that history, or as we’re fond of calling it: Hearstory. Scroll the timeline to learn about important milestones through the years, before the Eargo revolution. And amazingly, all of the contraptions and doodads actually existed.